Silent Church

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio. My name is Mike Abendroth. Boy, these headphones sound loud.

Yow! All right, I just got done recording a couple NoCo90s. You can go to NoCo90 .com or you can go to our YouTube channel, No Compromise Radio. I always say to myself, do I end up continuing to do these things?

Is it narcissistic? But at the end of the day, I think I've come up with the idea that if you can use social media for the gospel, and you've got a crack staff like Ben and Josh and these other guys, then you might as well do it.

So, anyway, season two. We had 45 episodes last year, and now it's the lost season. Season two is up and running. Crazy. Well, when you want to find a biblical church, what do you look for? There's lots of symbols in the church.

This is one of the NoCo90s that I was talking about, but now I have 24 minutes to talk instead of 90 seconds. If you just walk into a church and you can't see anything, what could you find out about the church?

Let's say you go and visit on a Thursday. There's no one around. You just walk into the sanctuary, the auditorium. What would you notice? Now, at seminary, when I was at the Master's Seminary, not Southern, but at Master's, I was required to go to a foreign-speaking church service, evangelical, and make notes.

The only thing I could understand in the entire service, I mean, I did understand there were singing, there were some readings, there was preaching. People had Bibles out, hymnals out. There was food afterwards and fellowship.

It was in Chinese-speaking church, and then they also had another service, American-born Chinese-English service after that. So I don't think I went to that, but I did hear the man say from the pulpit, Koinonia.

So my guess is he was in First John or some other place where the word fellowship in English was used, or the word koinonia. So something in common. And so I really liked that because you have to just sit and think.

And then we, as a family, I had a sabbatical in Europe, and you would go to churches in Germany, both Russian-speaking and English, excuse me, and, well, we went to an English-speaking church as well, too, in Munich, but German-speaking, Czech Republic, and other places.

And you couldn't understand anything, so you just sit and look. It's kind of like the man who said to me, I know a lot about you by what you didn't say today. I said, what do you mean? Well, you didn't say, come up to the front for an altar call.

You didn't say something about a decisional regenerational prayer. You didn't say these things. So in a similar fashion, just look around. Now, what I'm not talking about today are aesthetics and does the church look like a pizza hut or not?

The church building that I'm in now, Bethlehem Bible Church, I've been here 17 years, and whenever they started to build it 25, 30 years ago, they did get the loans. It's not like Robert Tilton. The loan will go through.

You will get refinanced. If God was going to give you a car, why wouldn't he just give you a car? Why do you have to get refinanced? But that's another story. And they said, well, if the church tanks and caves in, we can always put a bank in there, some loan company or something like that.

But it kind of looks like a pizza hut. So we have a little deal here with our parking lot and the church building. The folks that come here, they don't come for that. They come for rich fellowship as they together worship Jesus Christ and sit underneath the word preached.

So anyway, what do you see? Is curb appeal something important? So let's start from outside the church and work our way in. What about curb appeal? Now, some of the greatest looking churches regarding curb appeal have been dead men's bones on the inside.

I think of Saddleback. I've been there a dozen times maybe, and they've got curb appeal greeters out there, and then you go in and you just get nothing but moralistic, deistic hogwash. Early on, I heard stuff about Jesus crucified, substitutionary atonement, then it just became moral government kind of theory stuff and hogwash and Daniel plans and purpose-driven stuff.

And so you go into the church and you look around. I'm not talking about the foyer or the narthex. What's a narthex, by the way? I think that's my Lutheran days. We had a narthex. There's all these words.

I don't understand what they are. What do you call that thing again? They pour the Catholic communion wine down so it doesn't go into the sewer system. It goes into the ground, the sacred ground instead.

There's something. That's called something. Maybe it's got lav in there somehow, maybe clean, cleansed, laver. So you look around and you say, well, what don't they have? Let's start there. Well, they don't have any stained glass windows.

Is it still a church? Well, if you go to New England, which I don't have to go very far since I'm here, you think of the old meeting houses, the Puritan houses of worship, congregational folks and what they were like.

And there wasn't a nursery. There wasn't all kinds of other rooms. There weren't even bathrooms. You can go out to the use a privy pod, I guess, in the back. I'm not sure how that all works out. But you walk in and you don't see a lot of stained glass windows and you don't see gothic structures.

You don't see the structures you would notice in Europe, in these Puritan meeting houses. They didn't call it the church because the church is the people, obviously, and it's probably a good idea to call it, if I say to the kids, I'm going to the church, well, I'm going to the meeting house.

So you go to the meeting house and you don't see any icons. That would be good, right? So the first thing you see if you go to a Roman Catholic church, and I go into a lot of them, especially the ones in Europe and see the beautiful structure there and see what they're doing in there.

I see candles and I see statues and icons. So if you don't see any of those, that's a good sign, right? And you look around and you think, okay, what else do I see? Well, I see a pulpit and the pulpit, there's one on the left and one on the right.

And the first thing I think then is mainline church, Lutheran or Episcopalian or Roman Catholic, and they do some scripture readings on one side, they have a little sermonette on another, and one's a little lectern and one's a little Bible doodadsayer because it's not really a sermon.

So it's a doodad. That's my new word for a talk that's not really a sermon from the Bible centered on Jesus. It's a doodad. Dr. Doodad. It's just as good as a doodad. What do they call those cheese puffs?

Doodles or something like that, I don't know, not sure. So what I would rather see, I would rather see a pulpit, I'd rather see a larger pulpit. Of course, these are all just preferences, right? A large wooden pulpit signifying what?

The Word of God is central in this place. This pulpit, I don't have stairs that go up to it per se, I walk up onto a platform. It's raised up, not so I can be seen, but just so everybody can see me. To show the authority of Scripture, I remember at St. George's Tron in Edinburgh, Scotland.

I don't think it was Edinburgh, where is it? Glasgow, yes, Glasgow. And Eric Alexander was there, but when I was there, Sinclair Ferguson was, and he walked up into the pulpit and then put his hands out and let us pray.

Okay, high and lifted up, that is the Word of God. Not the man, not because he's got a robe on, not because of anything else, because he's got a Scottish accent or a Nebraska accent, but this is the Word of God.

You step in that pulpit, you deliver the Word of God, or you get yanked, right? That's the idea. So it's in the front and center. Okay, if it's a plexiglass pulpit or made of steel or aluminum or some cool warehouse effect, you don't have enough money because you're renting a school now and it's just a music plat, it's a music, not, they're not easels, what do they call them?

Music stands. Thank you, Steve. Where is Steve when I need him? But at least it's in the center, and that's why I get really nervous when people don't have those because they just kind of wander around and there is this symbolism in my mind, stick behind the Bible that's behind a pulpit.

I don't care if you walk back and forth a little bit, get back to the center there and preach from the Bible or in my case, the Bible from the iPad mini. I still bring my Bible up, but I made the switch, I don't know, six weeks ago, iPad mini probably won't go back.

Hopefully I get a full charge before I come to church. I've still been putting backup sermons in the pulpit, but I probably, I don't know, I don't think I need them. What else can you notice just by looking around?

Well, you can see that the communion table, oh, there's the communion table, especially during communion. So if it's every week, if it's once a month, once a quarter, once a year, where do they place the table so they can put the bread and the wine or the bread and the juice or the bread and the wine and the juice on the table for distribution?

Well hopefully it's down on the floor where the seats are, where the pews are, where the chairs are, the chair pews as we have here. I think that's quite a business, by the way. What does that symbolize?

Well it symbolizes the priesthood of all believers. It symbolizes we're all equal. It symbolizes there's a mediator, but his name's not Mike or Father Jimmy. It is Jesus Christ alone. And so that is why when we have the Lord's Supper, when you think about the symbolism even on the Lord's table, without going too far astray here on our topic, everyone gets served and then the elders get served last or the deacons get served last and then I, the pastor, if I'm leading it, we take turns here as an elder board leading communion, and then I take the last one.

Why? Because I may be up in the pulpit preaching away, but I want to serve everyone and then I'm last. Why does everybody keep the bread and then keep the cup so that we all drink together? Do this in remembrance of me and then we all drink together.

Well it's a sign of fellowship and camaraderie and love in one another. So that's symbolic as well. And so why don't I turn my back to the congregation and hold up the host really high? Well because that would be symbolic too.

Why don't I have an altar? What's missing in the church? Well there's no icons, there's no incense, there's no candles, and I don't mean candles because you live in a third world country and you can't afford electricity, but I mean candles like in the back, prayer for the dead, put in a buck and light a candle for Aunt Mary.

And there are no, there's no altar. Hey, wait a second, there's no altar at our church. By the way, I like to say to people, well we don't do altar calls for lots of reasons and one is because there's no altar in the church and I don't know where to call them to.

I'd have to call them to go to somebody else's altar, somebody else's church, and they just mean the front of course. But the altar is gone because what do you do in altars? I'll tell you what you do.

You slit things' throats. You slit the throat of things. You kill things. You, I don't want to say murder, but you kill them. And so there's no altar because Jesus Christ has been slain once for all, right?

It is finished. Sacrifices and offerings and whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sins you have not desired nor have you taken pleasure in them. Then he said, Behold, I have come to do your will. He takes away the first in order to establish the second.

By this will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. Every priest stands daily ministering and offering time after time the same sacrifices, talking about the old covenant, which can never take away sins.

But he, talking about Jesus, offered one sacrifice for sins for all time and sat down. It's done. The Old Testament priest didn't sit down. Why? Because people kept sinning. You had to re-sacrifice, sin, sacrifice, sin, sacrifice, sin, sacrifice, sin, sacrifice.

Now you don't have to sacrifice anymore. So you have actually a seat, right? A figurative seat, seated at the right hand of God, waiting from that time onward until his enemies be made a footstool for his feet.

For by one offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified. Hebrews chapter 10. There's no altar in the church. So that's something that you notice right away. Sometimes I ask myself the question, well, where did the clergy sit?

If they sit up on the platform, up on the stage, they could be from Baptistic. They could be crowded. It's a crowded place. So we don't have any more room. You got to sit up there on the stage. It could be very high church.

If you look around and say the pastor walks in the pulpit, does he have a robe? Now wearing robes, I'm not anti people who wear robes, but I'm anti robe. Do you get that? See how we're tolerant of other people and how we're so nice on No Compromise Radio.

By the way, to commend WVNE, I have never been told what I can't, what to say and what not to say on WVNE. Now maybe that's because the day that I get told that's the day I'm going to say toodaloo, choose adios auf Wiedersehen.

But in all seriousness, I commend them because they want local pastors on the radio teaching about Jesus Christ and the truths found in the scriptures. And so I commend them. I had lunch with Dave a while ago and just what a neat guy, what a Christian man who thinks about gospel ministry through radio, WVNE and some of the other stations.

So anyway, I'm glad I can just talk about these issues on the radio without being censored, sequestered, kicked off or anything else. But I bet you I'm only one cent away from being kicked off and kicked out, right?

I was praying today, Lord, just keep me. There goes a deer. Wow. Running across Phil's Christmas tree place. I went and cut a tree down. I had permission, but I cut one of the trees down and brought it home, but I left the money for the tree underneath his mat in his house because he was gone.

And so he said we could, but the kids were very concerned that I was stealing. I said, we already have permission. We cut it down, put it in the truck, sped off. Oops, forgot to put the saw back. So what do you see in a local church service and what don't you see?

Even before they open their mouths, you can learn a lot. How about the robe? Back to the robe. How I got to the deer and the robe, I'll never know. The robes. Now some say you wear a robe so people don't look at your tie, although you can still see the tie at the very top, or they don't see the quality or the, you know, good quality or bad of your suit.

And do you have a Windsor knot, single Windsor, double Windsor, you know, that kind of stuff. And they want to not be showy. Okay. I understand that. But I also get that the pomp, the circumstance, the grandeur, the special dress, that reminds me of something else.

And it doesn't remind me of Protestantism. It doesn't remind me of Puritans. It doesn't remind me of Reformers. It doesn't remind me of New England meeting houses. It reminds me of Old Testament, you know, the grandeur and the splendor of Old Covenant Solomon temple worship.

The sights and the smells and the tactile and the sensory, there's nothing like it. But that system's been done away with. And even when you look at Hebrews 10 that I was just reading, he takes away the first in order to establish the second.

One of the ways you could translate that is, he does away with, he assassinates, he comes up from the back and slits the throat. There goes another deer. They're just wandering around. Now they're in the cemetery.

There's a Roman Catholic cemetery across the street, and that's the cemetery I take the men who are in my preaching class and preaching discipleship, and they have to preach to the tombstones of those in the cemetery.

Because without the Word of God's enablement by the Spirit of God, you're preaching to dead people. Well, they're just running around. That's pretty cool. I just had a bow. Okay, I've never shot a deer and hit it.

Actually, when I moved to New England, I came from California, and I thought, you know, whatever the guys of the church do, I'll just do that too. I thought they're all going to be hunters because this is pretty much out in the boonies, town of 5 ,000, 6 ,000.

From my house to the church, no stop signs. I kid you not. No stop lights. Felt like I was in, I don't know, the Czech Republic someplace outside of Bruno's Hospital with Helga and Svetlana. I mean, that's where I think I live, basically.

There's more people there in Bruno than there are here. So just rambling along. The robe. The robe, to me, shows Old Covenant, shows Roman Catholic, shows pomp and circumstance, and so shows a difference between the lay people and the pastor, and the leader, and the head honcho.

And so, do they have a robe? Don't they have a robe? I know some wonderful Presbyterian ministers still wear a robe, and they're more godly than I am, and they preach better than I do, but I might disagree with them on that.

Okay. What else do you notice? Well, do you notice that the men are in charge? Now, of course, this will get me in trouble, but any time I can get in trouble for biblical stances like 1 Timothy 2, I'd be glad to, especially in our egalitarian age, especially outside of Gordon-Conwell, an egalitarian school.

I'm not too far from the place. And this is just the way of the world, literally, and we have complementarians, men and women who are equal in Christ, salvifically equal, Galatians 3 .28, but functionally different.

That's 1 Timothy chapter 2. There's a reason why all the apostles were male, et cetera. But the egalitarians believe that men and women are equal in Christ, similar to the complementarians, but they're equal in function as well, because for them, subordination is inferiority.

But at the home and in the church, God has a design, and it is with male leadership. So, scripture reading should be male. It's beyond me with people like Keller and other people who have women scripture readers.

Not just PCA people, but Baptist people, they just have women read the scriptures and do the pastoral prayer. Shouldn't be. Now, preaching, yes, men. Scripture reading, yes, men. It shouldn't be yes, men, of course, yes to God, men.

But what about ushers? Well, I think ushers should be men for a couple reasons. One of the reasons is because I want to get men involved in ministry, and I want to tell them that you're just not ushering.

This is how you usher. This is the theological, practical ramifications of ushering, and how do you usher to the glory of God? If you're just going to stand there, forget it. But I also want ushers to be men because if there's a ruckus, if there's some shenanigans, if there's a brouhaha, if there's a kerfuffle, I don't know why I like to say that, but I do, then you need to have men.

You need to have ushers trained. This is how you restrain someone. You're able to touch them on the wrist. You're able to tap them on the shoulder. You're to tell them, please leave or I'll get the head usher who happens to be a sheriff or whatever.

They need to know all that kind of stuff, and it's just better. Same thing for communion serving. I think you can make a case for communion service is by the deacons and their elders, and so those should be men, of course.

And you say, well, what about the sound room? Does it have to be a woman? And so you can ask me all kinds of crazy questions, and I won't even bother answering that one. But today on No Compromise Radio, we're asking questions like, what can you learn without hearing particular words?

One of the things that's different, we could ask is, what's the time element? How long's the service? Now, there's no set time. Could be three hour service, could be an hour service. But when it comes to preaching, there really has to be, I can't really set a number on it, so I think I will set a number.

There has to be at least 30 minutes of preaching. I think that's a minimum, 30 minutes of preaching. Because to set something up in context, to go through it, to talk about uses and exhortations if we want to use a Puritan model, or just practical application, or how is this truth about God relevant?

It is relevant, but how is it relevant as the pastor asks the question and answers it? How does this tell us about Christ? What does it tell us about Christ? It takes 30 minutes to do that, so 30 minutes, 45 minutes, something like that.

If it goes longer, if it's a conference or Sunday night, okay, an hour, hour and 15 minutes, I don't really care. But pastors who preach over an hour on Sunday mornings, they tend to be the young guys who they think it's cool to preach over an hour.

I preach over an hour, and I'd be thinking, young guy preaching over an hour, and he's killing people, metaphorically. You can ask yourself the question, do they have drums on stage? I guess that'd be a fair question.

I don't have my drums on stage. If Keith Moon was behind them, I would mind for lots of reasons. A, he really wouldn't have been dead, and B, he wasn't a believer as far as I know. I could spiral into so many things.

What do you do when you... Should people be believers to be in the praise team, the praise band, the worship band, the coffee house band? All kinds of things. So next time you go to your meeting house, walk in, walk around, and just observe.

See what goes on. See where the pulpit is. See where the communion table is. See what's not up on the wall, what is on the wall, how they do things. Are there pew Bibles around? That's a good thing. Where are the pew Bibles?

Where are the hymnals? You can't even find those in half the churches anymore. Where are the hymnals? You say, well, they put the hymns up on the screen, okay. Some exceptions on these, but I don't think there should be many exceptions for Christ-centered preaching, right?

Zero exceptions. Preach the word in season, out of season. Reprove, rebuke, exhort with great patience, and what doctrine? My name's Mike Abendroth, No Compromise Radio.

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible-teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God's Word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.